Biography

Aoife is Senior Lecturer at the School of Law. She has worked and researched widely on children's rights and has held a number of NGO and academic positions. She also has teaching and research interests in a number of other areas including family law and civil and political rights. She researches human rights issues through the lenses of social justice, gender and psychology. Aoife has recently published monographs on children, autonomy and the courts, as well as children's freedom of assembly and association. She is at present leading on a project for the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission to examine good practice examples of human rights implementation, and she is also working with Kinship Care Liverpool to ensure a human rights-based approach to kinship care.

She has also provided extensive consultancy and advice on children's rights, including for the Children's Rights Alliance, the Council of Europe, and independent litigants. She has published in a number of journals such as the International Journal of Human Rights and the Irish Journal of Family Law, recently guest editing a special issue of the International Journal of Children's Rights on weighing children's views on matters affecting them. She has also worked directly with children, for example in youth parliaments and teaching human rights to local primary school children through art.

Aoife has previously taught at the School of Law/Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, Dublin City University and the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. Previous organisations she has worked for include Save the Children UK, the Children's Research Centre (Trinity College Dublin), Amnesty International (as an Executive Committee member) and West Bank human rights organisation Al-Haq (as an intern).

Aoife received a degree in Applied Psychology from University College Cork in 2002, specialising in child psychology. She then went on to do a Masters in International Human Rights Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, N.U.I. Galway. After working with a number of NGOs she completed a Ph.D. in human rights law (entitled 'The International Legal Right of Children to be Heard in Civil Law Proceedings Affecting them') at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin.

At present some of Aoife's other projects include topics relating to discrimination on the basis of childhood, the online experiences of children with disabilities, and comparative work on adoption law in Sweden and England/Wales.